Sluggish on Mac

Natron on my iMac Pro is very sluggish. If I run it in boot camp in PC it’s fine. What’s sluggish is not the comp itself but the interface, when it’s time to create nodes and move them around. Anyone else has this problem?

macOS version? If you have 10.15+ download dmg ending in macOS1015 or macOS11.

That’s the same version as the one I was using.

the macOS1015 one? could you test RC2 macOS11(if you run macOS 11 of course)?

I can’t. I’m on 10.15.7.

Understand. It was a known issue, but should have been fixed (have you tried RC2?). I don’t have access to 10.15 (I test on 10.13/10.14/11), so I can’t verify if it works as it should, maybe @devernay knows.

I just was that there was a version of RC2 for 1015. Just tried. Same. Thanks for the fast response BTW :slight_smile:

@rodlie the previous issue we had was specific to Big Sur and was fixed, see https://github.com/NatronGitHub/Natron/issues/606

Release 2.4.0 for macOS Catalina 10.15 has this fix already.

@BlenderBob Can you please file a proper bug report on github so that we can follow up on this?
Can you please test using the following project: Download Natron from SourceForge.net
If you have this issue, please do a screencast. How many FPS (approx) do you get on the nodegraph when panning/zooming? Compare macOS vs Win if you want, of course.
Please use Natron 2.4.0 for macOS 10.15 in your tests: https://github.com/NatronGitHub/Natron/releases/download/v2.4.0/Natron-2.4.0-macOS1015.dmg

The nodegraph has always been a bit slower on macOS than on WIn and Linux, but it should still be usable (at least 4-5fps). Before that fix, Big Sur was more 1-2fps.

Well, that’s pretty much what I get. 4-5 frames per sec with the version you suggested. I’m quit busy these days and if it a known issue I wonder if I should write the bug report. Isn’t it just jogging to create a duplicate task?

4-5 fps is OK on macOS.
1-2fps was not usable and triggered the previous bug.
If no regression can be observed from earlier versions (eg 2.3.15 and 2.2.9) then that’s normal, and probably due to the way QT is coded on the mac. Feel free to post a screencast comparison between Win and Mac (use the BayMax project), that will be helpful for future reports

Maya uses nodes, so do Nuke, Blender, Fusion and many others but they don’t have the issue. So maybe it’s the way Natron is coded, not a QT problem. But then again, I’m not a programer.

Could you post a screen recording of the issue? I’m a bit curious as I don’t have these kind of issues on macOS (pre 10.15), yes the (nodegraph) performance is not as good as on Windows/Linux, but not that bad (I use Natron regularly at work on macOS 10.13/10.14).

I found the problem. The screen resolution. I have a 4k monitor. At 4k, it’s painful. If I change the resolution to 2.5 k it’s already faster. In HD it’s again much faster and if I make Natron’s window even smaller then it’s super fast, actually, the speed it should be.

Interesting, I use a 2k monitor.

What kind of graphics card do you have?

IMac Pro AMD vega 64 with 16 gig of ram

That card is overkill for anything in Natron, so it’s not hardware related.

Is it screen resolution, or just the window size?

Well, the bigger your screen resolution is the bigger the window size is. But if I make Natron smaller, then it gets better so I would say window size. :slight_smile:

Then that’s because of the poor Qt canvas performance on macOS.
This may be fixed in Qt5 or Qt6, but that’s not a bug on our side (and it’s usable), and we won’t fix the Qt4 macOS code again.
I already fixed it for Big Sur, because macOS changed its default behavior, and Big Sur got something like 1fps, which was definitely not usable.

I found the issue! It’s when the monitor is in HIDPI. If I set my resolution to 2560x1440 without HIDPI, Natron is super crazy fast. I use a freeware called RDM to do so.